Adding a NW6.5 server into your Tree

Novell Cool Solutions: Trench

We've heard from a lot of people who want some advice on what to do before introducing new NetWare 6.5 servers into a tree with existing NetWare 5.1 and 6 servers. Here are some ideas. OPEN CALL: If you have other advice to add, please let us know.

Glen Davis

Here are some things to do.

Update all 5.1 servers to sp6 - this will put the NICI 2.x on the
servers as well as get it to the latest code.

Run Pkidiag on any servers being upgraded and make sure
certificates are good. It would probably be a good idea to also run
sdidiag and fix any tree key issues (do this after sp6 is applied).
Support's number 1 problem is customers who have broken Certificates and or
tree keys, who upgrade and find that most of their products won't run
because security is broken.

NW6sp1 should be fine, but most testing has been done with servers
with NW6sp3. At a minimum you should probably update any NW6 servers
being upgraded.

Run all the checks from the deployment manager (DS check, schema
update, etc.).

Check, check and double-check your current NDS health using
DSREPAIR. Also run a DSREPAIR -RC to backup the database. Also check
timesync. (I have had major DS crashes because I did not check health
and I did not have a good backup.)

Make sure your SYS volume has enough free disk space

Use TRUSTEE.NLM
to export all trustee rights. (believe me.. this is a life saver when this
whole update process crashes)

Run the SP6 update process.

Run additional updates

Run the JVM update, make sure JAVA.NLM is not loaded.

Check NDS health and timesync again... and you're ready to upgrade to
eDirectory.